One Match to Start a Fire. (The Last Dance Episodes 9 & 10)

Years of awaiting this documentary. 10 Hours, 10 Episodes, 5 Weeks, and it has all come to a close. The anticipation was huge, and with the lack of live sports, ESPN really came through with this documentary in desperate times for sports fans across the world. Never before seen footage gave us everything we needed to hear the soap opera eight seasons that was the Chicago Bulls Dynasty.

Episode 9:

People cannot pretend to put Reggie Miller on the same level as Michael Jordan. Ask someone who doesn't know a thing about sports who Reggie Miller is and they will look at you silly. Ask that same person who Michael Jordan, LeBron James, or Kobe Bryant is, and I guarantee they could tell you what team they played for or what number they wore. I just don't know why the documentary was trying to make Reggie someone he wasn't. Don't get me wrong. He was damn good, but he wasn't MJ good. An all time line came from Reggie attempting to guard MJ tho. "Don't ever doubt black Jesus again." Although it is one of the Ten Commandments of religion not to put someone on the same level as God, Michael Jordan is the God of basketball, so sorry Jesus, but just like I'd never doubt you, I don't think that Reggie Miller will ever doubt Michael Jordan again.

Something else that really stuck out to me about Reggie Miller and Michael Jordan squaring off in the playoffs is the "lightly, LIGHTLY pushed off" quote that Reggie Miller had. I really couldn't tell if Miller was being sarcastic, but watch the film back, and Reggie Miller might as well have been Jadeveon Clowney. He took MJ out of the play to hit (what would become) the game winner for a game in the playoffs... Not to mention MJ's double clutch, in-n-out bank shot that was "millimeters away from going in" in Reggie Miller's words.

Although it is very exaggerated, these two videos have the same principal. If you run full speed at someone and don't stop, you take them out of the equation. Although shoutout MJ for getting back up to at least put a hand in Miller's face as he cans a three.

Enough about Miller. Next on MJ's hit list was Karl Malone. The Mailman was dubbed the 96-97 Regular Season MVP for the NBA. So, in turn, like George Karl, BJ Armstrong, and LaBradford Smith could tell you, you didn't really do anything, and now MJ was pissed at you. So, the Chicago Bulls beat the Utah Jazz in the 1997 NBA Finals fueled by MJ's anger of Malone winning the regular season MVP.

In that same finals series, MJ body bagged another player on his kill list. When MJ retired from the Bulls (the first time) to play baseball, he watched the Bulls take on the Jazz in a regular season game as a fan. Byron Russell, a rookie on the Jazz that night told MJ that "you know I could guard your ass". Well, in the 1997 finals, Russell had to opportunity to prove it. Instead, MJ would take another name off of his kill list by hitting a buzzer beater right in his eye in game one of the series.

The 1997 series is also where the infamous flu game happened. What many people learned tonight is that it wasn't really the flu that Michael Jordan had. Instead, the story goes: the night prior to game five, Jordan was in a hotel room in Utah. Around 10:30p he gets really hungry. The only open place was a pizza place. The pizza comes, and five dudes were delivering it. Only MJ touched the pizza (shout out the stomach of this man to house a full pizza a mere 18 hours before tip-off). I don't know where the miscommunication was, but MJ's nutriontionist told MJ to avoid the pizza cause there was five delivery men for one pizza. This one, HAS to be put on the entire Bulls organization.

One, you can't let your franchise player eat an entire pizza by himself the night before a Finals game.

Two, you can't accept a delivery from five people for one pizza: it is either a prank or five crazy fans who poisoned the pizza because you told them not to fuck up the pizza because it is for the greatest athlete in the world.

Three, if you tell a player not to eat a pizza, and you watch him do, its on you. There were AT LEAST three missed opportunities here.

Anyway, MJ goes on to play 44 minutes and score 38 points. I don't know about you, but when I am sick, I am useless. You could throw me out in the trash because there is a good chance I'm not getting out of bed. But this dude MJ really went out and played 4 minutes short of an entire game and nearly dropped a 40 piece on the second greatest team in the game that year. How can you tell me he isn't the greatest player of all time? This dude was literally a tap-of-the-stomach away from shitting himself for an entire day and went out and played 44 minutes while getting 38 points. We all know the flu game, but what we didn't know is that it really was the "food poison game"... doesn't sound as great, so lets keep calling it "The Flu Game". Would have been hilarious if MJ pulled a Pierce (before Pierce) and had to be wheel-chaired off to go take a shit in the middle of a play off game.

Also, an all time opportunity taken here for the DiGiorno social media team:

Next, and likely my favorite topic of the night is Steve Kerr. Kerr hit a stride in one of last week's episode and had a good portion to himself this week as well. Kerr becomes more and more likable throughout the series. Here is a man who got "about the same attention I was getting from girls my senior year of high school" when asked about his recruitment for college ball. Like what an all-time line. He was an average Joe who was a little bit better at basketball than the rest of every other white high schooler. No recruitment, and no girlfriends... he was basically just you or me. The incorporation of talking about Kerr's family life and having no father since the beginning of college was interesting to learn about, and also heart wrenching. His father was brutally murdered, and never got to see his son in an NBA game. It deeply saddens me to know that Kerr had this great success from hard work and dedication, and his number one fan never got to see any of it pay off.

Another amazing story about Steve Kerr was the finish of the '97 NBA Finals... And I can let him tell the story because him telling it is that of stand-up comedy! Here is the play:

And how the play occurred in the eyes of Steve Kerr:

Moving on to Episode 10.

This episode focused primarily on the 1998 Chicago Bulls Finals against the Utah Jazz. Hence the name of the documentary "The Last Dance". In game three of the NBA Finals, the Utah Jazz were embarrassed and were held to the lowest scoring game by one team in the modern NBA shot clock history, scoring only 54 points. 9 points in crunch time will NEVER cut it.

So, after that game, we get a classic Dennis Rodman moment. Rodman, in the middle of the NBA Finals series says, fuck it, I'm a WWE star, and goes to hang out with Hulk Hogan on his off night.

Phil Jackson would back Rodman up when asked by the press saying, "he's only taking your focus away from the finals. Not ours." This quote is hilarious. Phil Jackson basically says, "remember Vegas?"

The series begins to close out by talking about the 1998 finals game six. Pippen has back problems, he popped in and out of the locker room. He played a decoy on offense. Basically, you can't leave him open and force a double on someone else cause he'll get an easy bucket, but you also can't focus entirely on him since he wasn't 100%. The Utah Defense was confused what to do with Pippen, in turn, giving MJ a chance to either score in a one-on-one or get an assist to Pip every time on offense. Essentially, this game led to "The Shot". No, I am not talking about North Carolina Freshman, Micheal Jordan. I am talking about the "last game in a Bulls Uniform Michael Jordan", "The Shot" (Still unbelievable to me that one man can have two shots named "The Shot"). I don't have the poetic verbiage well enough to describe "The Shot," but in my own thoughts, I will say, I don't think MJ pushed off:

The series ends with everyone explaining how the 1998 Bulls team last met. A single match, and all of their kind words to another were lit on fire, so they could watch how one match starts a whole fire, just as Michael Jordan did when he was drafted by the Chicago Bulls in 1984, who would later lead them to 6 Championships in 8 seasons.

It is tough to know that this series has come to an end. I really enjoyed every second of it. Thankfully, sports fans have live sports back (Bundesliga, NASCAR, Golf returns in less than one month), but I will continue to keep watching sports documentaries. The only complaint I had with this series I have explained many times: the jumping around.... Other than that, this might be the greatest sports documentary I have ever watched because it is so specific and well explained.

Tweets of the night:

Side note: We saw many of MJ's cars throughout the documentary, but this man is no doubt the GOAT of the license plate game.